Balmy morning, refreshing,
This late autumn presence
Calmly settling my soul,
Silent lightening flashing
Suggests winter will not win
Mother Nature’s favor
It waits, illuminating
Like I, searching the sky
For thunder to reassure
The Wealthy Thief
Front page of the newspaper
There it was, bold, embarrassing
Born into a world of everything,
Wealthy, had to take more, for what
Donated countless dollars to charities
The name always there at the top
Now just the thief in the family that
Had been revered for hard work
This man, arrogant in his meanness
Every other Monday placing a plate
Before him, simply waitstaff, a nobody
He could not be kind if it was not seen
I read the article which talks of millions
Why would he, with all that, need more
People wonder who live on so much less
Like me who cringed setting down the plate
Not gleeful or sad at his self directed demise
He is what he always was, simply a man
With too much money in the bank and
No investment made in his heart
Dogs
The gloomy day outside ironic
Against my singing heart aloft
Despite the bluster of grey winds
Forewarning perhaps, or just this
Gusts to clear out leaves, dust
Trash against fence lines, a chill
Permeating the air with crispness
The man with his cane, stopped on the
Sidewalk, his jaunty cap pulled down
I drive on to my sister in law’s house
To drop a shared item of inconsequence
My pleasure as we speak at the door
Me watching her dog, head cocked
Attentively ernest in the voice of her
Master, the devotion evidence
Of the persistence in attachments
Formed with care and kindness
Driving then, to work, the man still
In the same spot with a younger man
A big brown dog joyfully jumping in the field
Adjacent to the deserted church; for sale
Both men animated by the dog, it appears
Their shared smiles testimony it is so
Remembering now, my five o’clock walk
The beagle standing at the corner of the
House where usually a black cat jumps from
A chair on the porch scaring me every time
That dog simply silent observer, his ear
The only thing that moved in the wind
My happy heart not so ironic after all
The Scale Only Measures in Numbers
So many scales you effortlessly hold which cannot
Balance a heart cloaked from justice’s kindness
The measuring and describing in resentful alacrity
The painful experience genetically shielded were you
Giving no credence to a stranger’s feelings,
And the rolling number she sees each morning
Feeling internal disgust with every morsel
And the looks to match of a thousand scolding
Eyes with acid voices everywhere she must go
A Random Examining Room
I put the book of poetry down even though
The words on most occasions bring solace
Staring out a window facing a water tower
A remembrance park for cancer patients under
Its shadows, possibly adding cool on a hot
Summer day when no one wants to stroll there
Or anywhere, unlike the painting on the adjoining wall
Whose color palette confessing its age; at the height
Of mauves, and a lightened blue that is meant to imply
Water and sky soaked in sunshine with the sailboats belying
The lake’s gift of ease probably in Italy somewhere
Tourists sipping on some spritz of wine and Campari
A plate of antipasto in wait for the two lovers luxuriating
On their lovely patio they feel too lucky to have gotten
Passion’s affections intensified by the language, the scene
Their good fortune and wine under the garish glow of the sun
A memory created by the hand and idea of some random artist
Slightly incapable, like me, who kept attempting to capture
A feeling that was wished or hoped to have happened
And a hospital administrator thought would bring peace
When any number of physicians and nurses would be tortured
With the job of saying things like, considering your age,
On a scale of one to ten how do you rate your pain,
It could be worse, you still have options, or
Is there someone we can call, and the patient thinks
I would like to go to that lake to find that someone
Before you say another word that breaks my heart
Breakfast with Buse 